


Catch Up

by Azzandra



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Family, Fluff, Gen, Main quest spoilers, The Institute - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 09:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5329871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a lifetime of separation, there's a lot of family stuff they never got around to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch Up

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for a [prompt](http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/6099.html?thread=16077011#t16077011) on the kink meme.

Shaun halted in the doorway of his own quarters, ambivalence surging through him as he regarded the interloper.  
  
"Mother," he said cautiously, letting none of his feelings show.  
  
If anyone else had invited themselves into his personal space like this-- well, he didn't even know what to think. Nobody had ever dared. His door was always open with the understanding that it was a threshold none might pass without his permission. His mother was not yet attuned to the social subtleties of the Institute.  
  
She sat on his sofa, holding a bottle of Nuka-Cola in her hand and staring at it with philosophical intensity. She had an arm thrown over the backrest of the sofa, and her legs were demurely crossed under her old-fashioned dress.  
  
Shaun wondered if this archaic image she projected was affectation or mere consequence of her nature, but she looked very much like the middle-class pre-War housewife she once was; like something out of a magazine, Shaun thought. A Nuka-Cola ad on a glossy page, back when that sort of thing was common.  
  
She looked up at him and quirked a smile.  
  
"Shaun," she said, with the gentle, subdued voice she only ever used on him.  
  
He walked into the room, and pressed the panel to close the sliding doors behind him.  
  
"I understand there was some unrest in the BioScience labs," he said as neutrally as possible.  
  
"Oh... the grandkids getting riled up, that's all," she replied.  
  
Her little joke as it were: if he was the Father, then the Institute were her grandchildren. She thankfully never let this joke go beyond the walls of his room, but he felt optimistic that it bespoke of a certain acceptance of her new position as Director. He had never been entirely sure she cared for the Institute, after what had happened to her in the Vault.  
  
"You resolved the situation admirably, from what I am told," he said. "I was glad to hear it."  
  
"They didn't hurt anyone." She shrugged. "They were just throwing a tantrum. I should hope all my opposition in the Institute will be this blatant. I admit I expected subtle acts of sabotage, not outright mutiny."  
  
"Those will come as well, in time," Shaun said.  
  
"Joy." And then, less wryly, "Have you ever had a bottle of Nuka Cola?"  
  
"I can't say that I have," he said.  
  
She extended the bottle to him.  
  
"Come on, live a little before you die," she said.  
  
He accepted the bottle, but held it awkwardly, unsure what to do.  
  
"We try to avoid contamination from the surface," he said. "All our food is made internally, free from taint or radiation--"  
  
"Yes, I saw the edible horror pastes," she said. "But that hasn't really stopped you from dying at sixty, now has it?"  
  
He remained quiet for a moment.  
  
"I'm out there soaking up rads by the boatloads every day," she said. "Trust me when I tell you, a bottle of Nuka's not going to kill you any faster than whatever else is going on with you."  
  
"Alright," he said. "I... will try it."

He gave the bottle cap a bewildered look for a moment, unsure how to proceed. It didn't look easy to pry off by hand, and he had no tool adequate to the task. His mother chuckled and took the bottle. She set the cap against the ridge of the sofa's arm rest, and with an expert tap, made it pop clean off. Then she pocketed the cap and passed him the opened bottle.  
  
She gave him a fond smile as she did, something distantly amused and warm at the same time.  _Motherly_ , Shaun thought.  
  
The glass was cool against his lips, and it felt strange to drink from a bottle. The liquid itself was sweet, cloyingly so, with a metallic aftertaste that repulsed him.  
  
He coughed.  
  
"People used to guzzle this stuff down by the crate back in my day," his mother informed him. "Couldn't get enough of it."  
  
"It must have been an acquired taste," Shaun replied, clearing his throat.  
  
"More like you had to be there," she said, shrugging slightly. "Plenty people still like the stuff even now, though."  
  
She took the bottle from him, still full and nearly untouched. He was relieved to be rid of it, though he tried not to show it.  
  
"You would've loved it as a kid," she said, and though it was an off-handed remark, they lapsed into a painful silence afterward.  
  
"What about a home-cooked meal?" she asked after a while. "Ever had one of those?"  
  
"I am not certain I understand the meaning," Shaun said. Whatever connotation the expression might have had before the War, he assumed it precluded the, in her words, 'edible horror pastes' he'd always eaten.  
  
"I'm cooking you a meal," she said decisively, and nodded to herself. She took a sip of the Nuka-Cola. "Never fed my boy a proper cooked meal, absolutely preposterous," she added to herself in a mutter. "Hmph."  
  
"As you say, Mother," Shaun replied, amused and feeling an odd warmth in his chest.  
  
Though it was foolish to indulge her like this, he did not mention that the medicine he was taking had taken a terrible toll on his stomach and he would likely not be able to enjoy very much of the meal. She had lost her opportunity to be a mother to him in the way she would have wanted. There was little enough he could do about that.  
  
Or, no. There was  _one_  thing he could do for her. The child synth project was so very close to done, and given her interactions with the Railroad and what he'd seen of her around the Institute, Shaun suspected she had a certain soft spot for synths, stemming perhaps from her naive belief that they could be people.  
  
In the wake of his death, it might provide her with some manner of comfort to have a simulacrum of the child she lost. He would do this much for her, he decided.


End file.
